Alfonso Steele

[1] His grandfather, Thomas Steele, a native of Dublin, Ireland, had served on the schooner "General Putnam" in defense of New York during the Revolutionary War and had settled in Kentucky with his family in 1798.

At seventeen, Steele traveled to Lake Providence Louisiana, where he joined Captain Ephraim Daggett's volunteers bound for Texas in 1835.

While crossing the Colorado River and receiving word that the Alamo had fallen, Steele and the group then joined Houston's army.

He was severely wounded shot through the lung during one of the first volleys of the battle, but continued in the fight until its conclusion and accepted no surrenders.

Hampton and his brother, Alvarado "Rado" Steele, who served Texas during the Civil War, were the only survivors of the first families that are now in the county.

A life-sized portrait of Steele hangs in front of the Senate chamber, to the right of the dais, at the Texas State Capitol in Austin.